March 23, 2006

I hated Last Year at Marienbad—in fact, I think I left early when it was shown (not long after Hiroshima Mon Amour, which I stuck out until the end)—so I was a bit put off by the bit on the jacket of The Invention of Morel that claimed it's the model for the movie. But in fact, even though it plainly is, I liked it a lot! I thought it would turn out to be more Third Policeman/Pincher Martin than, in fact, it was, but still. Yay books. (It's possible that I bought it despite my premonitions because it has a photo of an attractive woman on the cover, but the last book I bought for primarily that reason turned out to be pretty disappointing, so one would hope I might have learned my lesson.) Maybe I should watch LYaM again? Maybe not.

In other book-related news, today I slipped a nearby copy of Cat's Cradle into the dust jacket of a copy of this book at a Barnes and Noble, placing the displaced book underneath, I think, a cookbook?

March 20, 2006

March 13, 2006

This probably won't get as many comments as the post immediately below it, but ctypes, despite its incredibly scanty documentation, is very cool. I'm probably the last person to realize this. However, I just discovered that the beep media player has been removed from portage, and my installed copy decided to stop playing ogg files for some reason, but that there's a fork called audacious. But I didn't want to have to do what I did when I installed bmp for the first time in order to get a python interface (namely, download pyxmms and doctor the makefile), so to ctypes I turn, and Bob's your uncle; one module to control xmms, bmp, and audacious. Granted it could be better designed (like, the whole thing could be in a class, so you could have interfaces to different players running simultaneously more easily), but hey, it works.

Not many people know the following bit of obscure American historical trivia, but, as it was recently brought back to my attention and I love nothing more than sharing interesting tidbits which delight and instruct, I lay it out for you below.

Before the profusion of railroad lines capable of transporting one from basically any major origin on one side of the country to any major destination on the other, regardless of the latitude of either, plans were made for two chief lines, or, if you like, one line with a major point of divergence, though they would still be two logical lines. Both would start in the highly populated northeast, travelling southwest for a spell until hitting roughly the middle of the country, there heading west in a more-or-less straight line. Then, one of the lines would turn to the northwest, ending in Washington state, and the other southwest, ending in Arizona. It was decided that construction on the lines (post-bifurcation) would proceed serially, with the latter being constructed first. However, as is well known, the process of undertaking such a vast construction project, in an era of rampant corruption (which is as much as to say, in an era), was more involved than anyone anticipated during the planning phase. As a result, after construction of the first branch was completed, all parties agreed that they wouldn't bother with the construction of the second, and those lines that did eventually service those areas were added piecemeal by individual operators.

I have been remiss in the composition of jokes based on puns, but I draw your attention to some jokes not based on puns—I like the second one best (though certainly there's something to be said for the third).